Emotions high at forum on suicide barrier

Though 75% of online respondents oppose changes to design of iconic Golden Gate Bridge, families of those who jumped argue passionately at forum in favor of prevention measures

Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Bette Wallace attends at a public meeting held on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 in San Rafael Calif. by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District to gauge public opinion of proposed suicide barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge.Photo by Kim Komenich / The Chronicle less

Bette Wallace attends at a public meeting held on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 in San Rafael Calif. by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District to gauge public opinion of proposed suicide barriers ... more

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

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Bette Wallace attends at a public meeting held on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 in San Rafael Calif. by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District to gauge public opinion of proposed suicide barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge.Photo by Kim Komenich / The Chronicle less

Bette Wallace attends at a public meeting held on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 in San Rafael Calif. by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District to gauge public opinion of proposed suicide barriers ... more

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

Emotions high at forum on suicide barrier

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Kevin Hines stood before a series of architectural drawings of proposed suicide barriers for the Golden Gate Bridge on Tuesday afternoon with a story to tell.

Eight years ago, he climbed over the famed span's 4-foot railing intent on jumping to his death - but survived the 220-foot fall.

"I jumped and lived," said Hines, a 26-year-old San Francisco resident. "Now I want to do whatever I can to prevent others from jumping."

One way to do that, he said, is to lobby bridge officials to support the construction of suicide barriers.

Bridge officials held the first of two public forums Tuesday to solicit reactions to five design options for a suicide barrier on the bridge. Each of the options would cost between $40 million and $50 million to build.

Bridge officials have been accepting comments online, and of the more than 900 tallied so far, an overwhelming 75 percent of the respondents said they prefer that no barrier be built at all. But a small, passionate group of proponents - many of them family members of people who jumped to their deaths from the bridge - insist a barrier is needed. Any barrier.

Nearly 90 people showed up Tuesday at the forum in San Rafael. Hines was there, front and center, talking to anyone who would listen.

"If you raise the rail, you'll stop the suicides," said Hines, who suffers from bipolar disorder. On Sept. 25, 2000, he says, he heard voices directing him to jump.

The idea of suicide barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge is not new, but the debate has been renewed now that the bridge district has commissioned the design options.

"It's a waste of money," Allyn Otnes, an 87-year-old San Rafael resident, said as she scanned the drawings. "There are better ways to spend $40 million, like beefing up the suicide patrols on the bridge."

In addition to cost, critics also lament altering the design of the Art Deco bridge, an icon of the Bay Area landscape.

Doris Lew and her husband, Larry, never planned on being activists, but they said they had no choice given the opposition that has emerged over the idea of placing a suicide barrier on the bridge.

"He was 18," said Doris Lew of her son, Henry, a senior at Justin Siena High School in Napa who was planning to attend UC San Diego and major in aeronautical engineering. "It was three weeks before graduation from high school. It was first period. He left class and went to the school library to print out driving directions to the bridge. At 11:38 on Tuesday, May 8, 2007, he jumped."

Like Hines, Henry climbed over the railing. But Henry died four hours after he jumped.

"It was an impulse," said Lew, 54. "If he had gotten to the bridge and had to figure out how to get over the railing, he would have had more time to think about it. We might have saved him."

Officials know of at least 1,300 people who have leapt to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge since it opened in 1937, giving it the grim distinction of being the No. 1 suicide magnet in the world.

Four of the proposals call for erecting a railing 10 to 12 feet high, with horizontal or vertical cables or steel rods aimed at keeping people from jumping over the side of the historic bridge. Another proposal would affix a net to the bridge about 20 feet below the walkway.

A sixth option would put no new physical barrier in place.

Golden Gate Bridge officials will continue accepting comments through Aug. 25. The bridge board of directors is expected to make a decision in October.

To find out more

Second public forum today

A public forum on the design options for a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge will held be from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. today at the Ferry Building, Pier 1, Port Commission Room, second floor, San Francisco.